[CR] Jack Taylor

(Example: Framebuilders:Brian Baylis)

Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 20:50:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Michael Butler" <pariscycles@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [CR] Jack Taylor
To: CR Rendezvous <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>


Hello Alan, Where the hell do you keep finding this stuff! Have you got some kind of special metal detector that locates this stuff in sheds and garages? You are right about there not being much on Taylors on the web. This is the little I know and if you don't mind will forward to the CR bods. Jack started frame making in 1936. Jack was the eldest one of the brothers he went to evening classes and learnt brazing. He is supposed to have taken a bike frame apart when he was 17 in 1936 and that's when it all started. Trial and error at first. Both he and Norman were pattern makers by trade. Jack purchased some land in 1942 and started building full-time. Then Ken was sacked from his job and joined the business. Next in was Norman but he had to go into the army. So the story goes Norman was working for Jack when he was thirteen filing up frames. The brothers are reputed to have trained 13 builders, Colin Laing being one of them. Their best year of production was 1963 when they made 516 frames (includes 78 tandems). Top year for tandems was 1977 when they made 96. Their first tandem was made in 1951 for the Paris show. They finished in 1990. All three of them were good roadmen and they raced together in the 1945 Brighton to Glasgow road race. Now you have a tandem you will have to join the TC it's only a tenner a year.

Thats all for now. Keep those wheels spinning, in your memories if not still on the road. Be lucky Mick Butler Huntingdon UK.